The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: If you've played previous Zelda games, it can be sad to see the state Ganon's in. Once a well-intentioned man who wanted to uplift his desert-dwelling people, he'd lose sight of his goal and become corrupted by his lust for power before battling Link and Zelda many times across the series' wide-spanning timeline. By the time of this game, he's long since been reduced to a near-mindless monster fueled entirely by his hatred and feral bloodlust, and any traces of his humanity are long gone. As evil as he's been, it's very tragic to see how far he's fallen, especially when you take his portrayal as a somewhat regretful old man in Wind Waker into consideration.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Invoked. The Trope Namer doesn't appear, but in the DLC, Link can gain the Tingle Set as a Joke Item. Its only real benefit is that it increases walking speed at night, but it has horrible defense, and NPCs will be noticeably frightened if Link talks to them while wearing it.
  • Anticlimax Boss: After all the hype he gets as being the greatest threat Hyrule has ever faced, Calamity Ganon just doesn't live up to it. Usually. Calamity Ganon is, on paper, a powerful foe worthy of being the final boss, at least at first. But if you play the game as recommended - freeing the Divine Beasts and Champions from Ganon's control and getting the Master Sword - you end up with a final boss that's weak to your overpowered unbreakable weapon, at the mercy of your hilariously overpowered Champion abilities, and missing half his health thanks to the Divine Beasts' laser bombardments. But he at least puts up a fight, which can not be said about Dark Beast Ganon. Don't get hyped when you're forced to fight a rampaging Godzilla-sized boar across the entirety of Hyrule itself on horseback: he's ridiculously slow, and his sole attack isn't even sort of a threat and will never hit you unless you intentionally let it.
  • Awesome Bosses: Monk Maz Koshia, the Final Boss of the Champions Ballad DLC. Yeah, first of all, the very revelation that you have to fight a Sheikah monk hits most players as a shock, as most of them do nothing except sit in their Shrines and give Link instructions on how to complete their Trials. Then you find out just what this guy is capable of. In effect, he is a Final Exam Boss, his attacks and abilities reminiscent of other enemies you fought previously, including the Yiga Footsoldiers, Yiga Blademasters, Thunderblight Ganon, Master Kohga, Hinoxes, and the Guardians, but also has a few tricks of his own like creating multiple copies of himself. If you truly want a challenge, this is the guy.
  • Base Breaker:
    • Princess Zelda is popular among some circles for being adorable, having a nice butt, and being one of the most tragic versions of the character, but other people simply find her whiny and dull, with her voice going hand-in-hand with the annoying factor. Her serving as the last line of defense against Calamity Ganon for over a hundred years has also won over fans for being a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but to others it just feels like a dolled-up version of her usual Damsel in Distress treatment.
    • Ask any Zelda fan what they think of Revali, and you'll probably get an equal amount of responses along the lines of "Oh my god, I love that guy!" and "Oh my god, fuck that guy!". To his fans, his cold, aloof, and downright mean demeanor make him a breath of fresh air compared to the other Champions, and his grudging respect towards Link that builds up while you explore Vah Medoh is a nice bit of character development. But people who hate him simply find him to be too mean to like, making him come across as a total asshole who some argue had his death coming to him.
    • Is Calamity Ganon's status as an Eldritch Abomination force of nature a cool new take on the franchise's oldest foe, or does it rob him of his cool factor? These detractors tend to prefer Ganon as a properly sentient Chessmaster and view the Calamity as just a mindless monstrosity that may as well have been its own thing, and his Anticlimax Boss status doesn't help.
  • Breather Level: The path to each Divine Beast has at least one section that can be incredibly tough, with the exception of Vah Medoh. The road to it is in the West coast of Hyrule, which tends to have stronger enemies, but it's a straightforward trek through the wilderness with no gimmicks, and gaining Teba's favor so you can confront the beast is as simple as beating a short and easy archery test. Vah Medoh's puzzles and gimmick are also very straightforward, making it a good Beast to start with.
  • Broken Base:
    • Many players were upset that the game had proper voice acting at all, while just as many others didn't mind so much. Though there's another Broken Base within that Broken Base - which is mostly just another battle in the ongoing Subbing Versus Dubbing war (Is the English dub better than the Japanese original?).
    • Going even deeper, there is a third Broken Base within the voice acting conundrum: is Zelda's English voice specifically good or bad? Even people who generally like the English dub criticize her for sounding too weepy and mopey, while others argue that it's fitting given the tremendous amount of pressure she's under. Then there's a third camp that thinks her acting is good but her general performance is hampered by her fake British accent, which ties into an issue with English voice acting for Japanese games that's been slowly gaining awareness: good actors being hamstrung by poor direction.
    • Is the weapon durability a cool new twist on the Zelda formula that encourages you to play carefully and smartly, or an annoying hassle that shouldn't have made it past the playtesting stage?
    • Overall, the vastly different feel of this game and what it could potentially mean for the future of the series has attracted a lot of debate. Plenty of fans feel that this game was the breath of fresh air Zelda desperately needed while fans who prefer the older style of games feel that Breath of the Wild barely feels like a Zelda game at all thanks to the lack of dungeons, unfocused story, and the emphasis on crafting and breakable weapons. The game's massive success and sequel has led to that camp of fans worrying that the series could never return to its old formula since it's clear that this one sells.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Bomb/Fire arrows + Exploding Barrels = Entire Bokoblin settlement destroyed. Simple, but satisfying.
    • Once you complete the goal at Eventide Island, you can go back and wreck revenge against the mobs that kept smashing you - including that Hinox - with your real weapons. You don't have to, but it's SO satisfying.
    • When you finally get the Thunder Helm, you become immune to those annoying bolts of lightning that plague you during thunderstorms. Suck it, Zeus!
    • When you start the game, Guardians are nearly indestructible and unbeatable juggernauts of death. When you finally gain the weapons you need to blow them into spare parts, try not to smile as your former tormenters lay broken at your feet. Though if you're good at timing your shield counters, the catharsis can come as soon as the very start of the game as you deflect their heavily-damaging beams right back into their faces.
    • Slaying a Lynel. These mini-bosses are hard, with a wide variety of attacks, ridiculous damage output, and they look pretty awesome to boot. A battle against one of them will likely be long and hard, but winning feels very rewarding.
    • While you can't normally kill Yiga Clan members since they'll teleport away after losing all their health, you can kill them with Ancient Arrows, which vaporize them the same as with other enemies. Whether you're doing it as revenge for suffering through the dreaded hideout infiltration mission, avenging Dorian's wife, or just because you want to, it feels great to wipe them off the face of the Earth, even if it means missing out on the weapons, Rupees, and Mighty Bananas they'd normally drop.
  • Demonic Spiders: Despite the game's small enemy variety, there are still plenty of beasts to be on your guard around.
    • The key threat of the game would be the Guardians: every last one of them is a pain in the ass, even the decayed, immobile ones. They relentlessly target you before firing beams of energy that have good tracking and hit hard. And by hard, we're talking six hearts worth of damage hard... in a game where you start with three. As long as there's ample cover the Decayed Guardians and Guardian Turrets aren't so bad, but the Guardian Stalkers will chase after you, and there's a flying variant too. Killing them can take forever with conventional weaponry which will lead to several broken weapons, and even though you can easily kill them by parrying their beams back at them, you better not flub up the timing because the result will either be one heavily injured Link, or one dead Link. And in Master Mode where they delay their shots, it's all too easy to botch a parry.
    • Lynels are mercifully rarer than Guardians, but are every bit as threatening. They've got the speed and ferocity you'd expect from a lion-centaur hybrid, and it doesn't matter if they're wielding a sword, crusher, or spear: even the "weakest" red variety hits hard, and they've got huge health pools that will take a while (and several weapons) to eat through. Fighting them at range isn't an option since they'll bombard you with volleys of Shock Arrows, meaning that you'll often want to fight them up close and personal, which demands you to have mastered the art of Perfect Dodging so they won't utterly maul you.
    • Electric, Black, and Silver/Gold Lizalfos are just as annoying as their weaker counterparts. But unlike the wimpier Green and Blue ones that have low health and the Fire and Ice ones that can be one-shot with the element they're weak to, these guys are annoyingly durable and are often packing nasty weapons such as Tri-Lizal Boomerangs and Lizal Spears. And unlike the elite Bokoblins and Moblins that are slow and easy to hit, these Lizalfos are bonafide Lightning Bruisers that will zip and zoom all over the place. The Electric ones also have the nasty ability to discharge a powerful electric field with a huge radius, and they have no elemental weakness to instantly kill them with. If you're visiting the Faron jungle early on to stock up on Hearty Durians and Mighty Bananas, be careful because the place is infested with these damn things.
    • While most Keese are literal examples of Goddamned Bats, Electric Keese cross over into this territory. While they're still fragile and only take one hit to kill, that's of little comfort when they can electrocute you for massive damage and sometimes attack in swarms. Even if you kill them they're still a threat, because their electrically charged bodies will often come hurtling straight towards you before vanishing.
    • Fire and Ice Wizzrobes can be annoying, but all it takes is the slightest exposure to the element they're weak to to kill them. You get no such mercy with Electric Wizzrobes, who have no elemental weakness and thus must be fought the hard way. And not only do they constantly disappear and only briefly reappear to attack you, but their attacks, like all other electric attacks, hit hard and will force you to drop your weapons while stunning you. That's already bad enough, but Thunder Wizzrobes are even worse, because they can summon thunderstorms to ruin your day.
    • Most wild animals aren't a threat in the slightest. Unfortunately, bears aren't most animals. They're tanky, fast, hard-hitting, and can't even be L-targeted. And in the colder parts of the map, you'll find Bokoblins riding them into battle. Luckily they're rare to the point that it's not uncommon for players to never run into them in over hundreds of hours of gameplay, but it doesn't make their rare encounters any less tense.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • The Four Champions are all runaway successes despite their meager screentime: Mipha for being an attractive fish girl with a gentle heart and an adorable crush on Link, Urbosa for being ridiculously cool and drop-dead sexy, Daruk for being a total bro, and even the controversial Revali is wildly popular for being able to back up his boasting with his skills and for having a good character arc. The fact that they aren't in the game anywhere near as much as they should be is one of the major complaints fans have, which would be rectified with the Ballad of the Champions DLC as well as their prominence in Age of Calamity.
    • Among their successors, Mipha's brother Sidon is another smash hit. But why wouldn't he be? He's a friendly, ridiculously attractive fishman with a Hot-Blooded personality, and for thirsty Yaoi Fangirls, he and Link make an attractive couple. His appearance in the Champion's Ballad DLC only further endeared him to people because you see him as a kid. And by god, is he adorable.
    • Paya's cute as a button and Adorkable to a fault, so her popularity rivals that of the Champions and Zelda as a result.
    • Kass already has plenty of fans thanks to being a friendly musician and a uniquely designed parrot Rito. But he's also got a huge furry fanbase for being a hunky parrot Rito.
    • Lynels were never particularly popular enemies in past games, but they really came into their own here. Their redesign is Badass and intimidating, and they're an absolute terror in combat to the point that the toughest Lynels are considered to be harder to kill than Calamity Ganon himself. While fighting them is incredibly hard, it's also exhilarating and fun, making them opponents worthy of both your fear and your respect.
  • Epileptic Trees: As a general rule, Zelda games invite plenty of speculation and theorizing, and this game is no different.
    • The game's timeline placement was left deliberately vague, partially to encourage this trope, but also so Nintendo couldn't limit themselves when conceptualizing future games. Because there are references to all three of the series' official timelines, there's plenty of speculation as to which one it could fit into, while some camps are convinced that it's where all timelines merge, or possibly an entirely new timeline in and of itself.
    • The Zonai tribe mentioned only in the game's official artbook is an entire forest of Epileptic Trees. Plenty of theories run abound, such as whether or not they're a tribe from a past game under a different name such as the Twili or the creators of Majora's Mask, if they had anything to do with the creation of Calamity Ganon, and whether or not they're important to the lore at all rather than just an intentionally mysterious and vague tribe made for the sake of worldbuilding. The vague weirdness and Zonai imagery of the sequel's trailers have burst the Zonai floodgates wide open.
  • Evil Is Cool: The Lynels, Badass centaur/lion-men who are some of the game's most difficult opponents.
  • Game Breaker: Oh boy are there a lot of these.
    • All four Champion abilities are hilariously overpowered. With Urbosa's fury, you get a three-use lightning attack that deals a ton of damage, has a huge radius of effect, and will make all enemies it hits drop their weapons if they aren't instantly killed. With Daruk's protection, you get a three-use barrier that will block any attacks that come your way. With Revali's Gale, you have a three-use updraft you can use to take off into the skies and glide around wherever you want, making exploration much easier and turning certain climbing puzzles into a joke. Last but not least is Mipha's Grace, which is basically a free Fairy with the added bonus of giving you some extra hearts after saving you from death. Each ability has a sizable cooldown to balance out how powerful they are, but you can greatly cut down on it by beating the Ballad of the Champions. And that buff stacks with Hyrule Castle's hidden attribute that also speeds up their cooldowns.
    • Despite how weak they are, Link's bombs have a ton of utility. They're essential for getting the game's Goddamned Bats to fuck off without using up your weapons' durability, can scatter mobs of enemies and send them flying off of cliffs and into deep water, and can even launch you across vast distances if you know how to exploit the game's busted physics. You can also use them as decent hunting and mining tools (though you might want to use proper arrows on bigger game, and sledgehammers and Cobble Crushers on ore positioned on the edges of cliffs), and they're not even that bad of a weapon to fall back on if all of yours break: both types of bombs have short cooldowns and you can easily cycle back and forth through your cube and sphere bombs while the other recharges.
    • Multi-shot bows are this because even when they're firing three or five arrows at once, they technically only use one at a time. Not only is it easier to hit speedy enemies or those zippy Korok balloons, but you can do a lot of damage when you fire them point-blank at enemies.
    • Cooking as a concept busts the game's difficulty right open. All you need is the right ingredients, and you can prepare meals that give you some ridiculous stat boosts. You can get huge attack, defense, and speed buffs, give yourself extra hearts and stamina wheels, restore tons of hearts and stamina, and because Eating is a Free Action, you can scarf down plate after plate of food if you have to in order to do whatever it is you need to get done.
      • On the other hand, quite a few fans were upset that there was no Auto Notes feature that could be used to list what combinations of ingredients did what.
    • In terms of ingredients, Mighty Bananas, Hearty Durians, Razorclaw Crabs, and Ironshell Crabs can be easily found in massive numbers around the Faron region, even in the early game. While getting the fruits can be dangerous because of the high level Lizalfos infesting the jungles, you can find dozens of each food in one round trip, allowing you to cook plenty of health, attack, and defense-boosting meals once you get back to a cooking pot.
    • Making tons of Rupees is as easy as cooking five cuts of Prime Meat and selling the resulting Meat Skewer, and they can sell for 220 Rupees a pop. While it'll be hard to come by earlier on since deer are uncommon and easy to spook, a trek to the far West will see you being constantly hounded by trios and quartets of wolves that drop it when they die, and killing them is as easy as dropping a bomb and detonating it when they get close. The Faron region also makes for a good hunting ground since the water buffalo there are big targets and surprisingly frail. Later in the game, the Hebra region is an even better hunting ground once you have the equipment for it, because the moose and wooly rhinos frequently drop Raw Gourmet Meat, which sells for even more when cooked into Meat Skewers.
    • Elemental weapons are a huge boon - particularly fire and ice ones, since they can instantly kill monsters that are of the element they're weak to.
    • The Hylian Shield, which is so durable it was originally thought to be unbreakable until it was discovered that yes, it can break, but it takes a really long time to do so. Its defense is the best in the game, you can get it right after leaving the Plateau as long as you're properly equipped and make your way carefully around Hyrule Castle, and by the time it does break you'll likely be able to replace it right away if you've done enough of the Tarrey Town questline. It's the perfect shield for parrying Guardian blasts with, and you can even get a lot of mileage out of shield surfing with it.
    • Barbarian, Fierce Deity, and Phantom armor sets. Each piece boosts your attack power, with the full set boosting it by 50%. And that's before you crank it up even further with meals. You can also pair it with defense-boosting meals, elemental resistance-boosting meals, and meals that can help you survive extreme temperature climates instead of choosing which singular buff you want to eat for. You have to put in some work to obtain the set you want (beating the labyrinths scattered around Hyrule for the Barbarian armor, having the right Amiibo for the Fierce Deity, and having the DLC and completing its associated quest for the Phantom armor) but they're well worth the effort.
    • The set bonus of the Zora Armor will let you swim up waterfalls. While you can already climb them with Cryonis, it's a long and painfully tedious process, and the Zora armor lets you zip up as quick as a flash. This wouldn't be game-breaking normally, but Hyrule Castle has quite a few waterfalls you can swim up, which lets you bypass a majority of the dungeon while Revali's Gale can let you cheese the rest.
  • Goddamned Bats: Who else but Keese? They constantly show up to harass you at night, can travel in massive flocks, and in certain regions you can be attacked by elemental Keese that can set you on fire, freeze you, or electrocute you for massive damage.
    • Lower-tier Lizalfos are ultimately not much tougher than Bokoblins, but their jumpiness and speed make them annoying to hit. And if you want to run from them, prepare to run for a long time because they can easily keep pace with you.
    • Most "Stal" enemies aren't threatening in the slightest since they usually have terrible weapons and can be dispatched in two hits. You'll still groan in exasperation every time you run into them, because they attack you in trios, can chase you over long distances, and pop up all over the place at night. They're prone to disrupting your fights against dangerous monsters like Stone Taluses and Lynels, scaring off prey you're hunting for meat, or spooking Blupees you're trying to steal money from. And to make things worse, the Lizalfos variants are just as annoyingly nimble as their living counterparts!
    • After you've beaten Master Kohga, you'll be randomly ambushed by Yiga Clan assassins all over the map. At this point they won't be a threat, but it's still annoying having them pop up and break the flow of whatever you're doing. Especially if you're attacked by a Blademaster, because they're a lot more aggressive and take a lot of punishment before going down.
    • Octoroks. The sheer amount of variations they have ensure that you can run into them no matter where you go, and they are annoyingly good with their tracking: instead of shooting directly at you, they tend to shoot where you're going to be which makes their weak rocks annoying to dodge.
  • Holy Shit Quotient:
    • Leaving the Shrine of Resurrection, and seeing all of Hyrule laid out for you to explore.
    • Slaying your first Lynel, especially if it's one of the stronger variants.
    • Running into one of the Spirit Dragons for the first time. Even if you picked up on what few hints of their existence there are, your first sighting of these majestic and awe-inspiring creatures will still be a total shock.
    • Confronting the Divine Beasts. Any of them.
  • Iron Woobie: Link and Zelda, full-stop.
    • Link was already tragic before the Calamity even struck, and so overwhelmed with pressure to live up to his knightly lineage that he hid behind a silent facade so as not to say anything improper. And once he began to befriend and bond with others, Calamity Ganon attacked, which would result in the four Champions dying, Link himself being fatally wounded, and Zelda putting him in a stasis chamber to heal while she'd keep Calamity Ganon sealed so Link could finish him off. 100 years later, Link wakes up in a broken, ruined Hyrule where most of his friends are dead, a good chunk of the people who remember him hate and blame him for the current state of Hyrule, and without most of his memories to boot. But with that being said, he keeps a stiff upper lip and tirelessly works to help usher in a new dawn for the Kingdom while aiming to destroy Calamity Ganon for good.
    • Zelda had a ton of pressure to live up to thanks to her own storied lineage and the fast-approaching return of Calamity Ganon. But despite her best efforts she couldn't awaken the divine power that rests inside her, driving a wedge between her and her father when he'd chew her out for her failures while other people began to lose faith in her. And by the time they finally manifested, they'd do so too late, making her feel personally responsible for the death and destruction caused by the Calamity. However, she's long since resolved to be strong and fights tirelessly to contain Calamity Ganon until Link arrives to finish what he started 100 years ago.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks: A common criticism of the game's story is that once you break it down to its basest components and trim the extra fat that comes from exploration, shrine quests and the like, there isn't really much of it. You wake up and learn the basics from the Old Man, talk to Impa and Purah, free the Divine Beasts, then fight Ganon. That's it, and there's nothing stopping you from going after Ganon once you leave the Great Plateau. The meat of everyone's character development happened in the past, which is relegated to short flashbacks scattered through the game. Zelda fans that are more concerned with exploration don't mind, but those who love the stories found this one rather lacking.
    • Related to that, the Vah Medoh arc is criticized for its short length compared to the other Divine Beast scenarios. All of them suffer from this trope to a degree, but there's at least a lot more meat to them compared to Medoh, where you're immediately sent after Teba once you arrive in Rito Village, and convincing him to help is as easy as beating a target test you can complete in your sleep. And since Medoh is the easiest and shortest dungeon in a game full of easy and short dungeons, you can start and beat the Vah Medoh scenario in as little as fifteen, maybe twenty five minutes.
  • Memetic Sex God: The Rule 34 artists had a field day with this game. Some obvious examples:
    • Prince Sidon is... curiously attractive for a fishman. He is insanely popular among fangirls with a taste for hot monster boys. There's also a lot of overlap with furries who are thirsty for the hunky Kass and slender Revali.
    • Urbosa. Within hours of her reveal, her ridiculous height and toned physique attracted a ton of "Death by Snu-Snu" jokes and other such remarks. Riju also got hit with a similar reception, until the revelation that she was a preteen scared off all but the lolicons.
    • Princess Zelda, mainly for her ass and the way the frog memory goes out of its way to show it off.
    • Much like how everyone was gay for Bridget in the Guilty Gear games, everyone's gay for Link. He's always been handsome, but this incarnation's effeminate good looks and flattering midriff-baring outfit he has to wear to get into Gerudo town have even left straight male fans flustered.
  • Misblamed: Critics of the game's English dub will point to Zelda's knighting of Link as an example of terrible voice acting because of how disinterested she sounds during it... except the whole point of the scene is that she is disinterested. At the time of Link's knighting, there's a rift between the two thanks to Zelda's resentment of him, and Daruk even Lampshades how phoned in the whole thing is.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • The Yiga Clan are already firmly on the side of the Eldritch Abomination threatening to lay waste to Hyrule, but they truly cross the line with the murder of Dorian's wife when he had enough of them and left.
    • One particular Fire Wizzrobe can be found dancing among the burnt remains of a house... a house he's implied to have recently burnt to the ground. Several players have been known to specifically hunt and kill this particular Wizzrobe after the passing of every Blood Moon for this.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "Yahaha!" - said by the Koroks when you find one. All 900 of them. It's supposed to be cute, but boy does it get repetitive.
    • "Ehehehe!" - Yiga assassins when they ambush you, which is all the damn time once you've defeated Master Kohga.
    • You will learn to absolutely HATE the sound of rain, because that's the game's way of saying "Whoops! No climbing for you!"
    • The frantic piano when you're spotted by a Guardian is normally scary, but once you've gotten used to them it's annoying to hear this tune cut into Hyrule Castle's epic theme, or to have it interrupt the game's beautiful scenery because you accidentally wandered into one's sights.
    • Get caught while sneaking up on a monster camp, and you'll feel like an idiot once the scouts alert everyone by constantly blowing on their stupid little horns.
    • If you aren't keen on Revali, his condescending remarks as you explore Vah Medoh will make you wish you could throttle the overgrown chicken and shut him up despite the fact that he's already dead. Of course, that could mean the developers did their job only too well.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Magda, aka the "crazy flower lady". Quite a lot of Memetic Mutations (with an example here).
    • Fi's voice-only appearance in the final flashback is brief, but incredibly memorable for its poignance despite her divisive reputation from her home game.
    • Loone, another crazy woman Link meets, who is in love with Guardians, and won't relinquish an Ancient Orb he needs until he provides some way for her to view them safely. Meaning he has to use his Sheikah Slate to photograph them.
  • Political Correctness Gone Mad: Some of the fandom's reaction to other fans' treatment of Vilia - the game treats him as nothing more than a man who dresses like a woman in order to infiltrate Gerudo Town, likely for perverted reasons, and puts on a feminine charade when talking to Link so he can keep up the masquerade. Naturally, this has led to some folks declaring that the game's treatment of Vilia is transphobic, and communities like Zeldapedia and TV Tropes refuse to refer to Vilia as male in articles and pages - instead opting to use "she" or "they". For whatever it's worth, the game's official artbook refers to him as male.
  • Ruined FOREVER: It wouldn't be a Zelda game without fans getting upset over the slightest change in the formula. Though surprisingly, while there are critics of the vast departures Breath of the Wild has taken from series traditions, the overall sentiment towards it has been kinder than the likes of, say, Wind Waker in the early 2000's, Spirit Tracks, or Skyward Sword.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Yunobo - personality-wise, he's actually fairly well-liked since he's a friendly guy and a Lovable Coward with a solid character arc. But when it comes to gameplay, he's hated because of the hellish escort mission where you have to slowly lead him up Death Mountain while hiding from Vah Rudania's drones.
    • Magda is a straighter example. While there's amusement (and terror) to be had from how rabidly protective she is of her flowers, her aggression and borderline sociopathic disdain for anything that isn't them don't endear her to anyone. Neither does the lengthy process of having her yell at you then drag you away from any flowers you step on.
    • Because of how samey and bland their designs are, the Blight Ganons aren't exactly popular bosses. Unsurprisingly, this led to them getting extensive redesigns in Age of Calamity, much to the relief of fans.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • While most players don't have an issue with the game's realistic environmental effects, the rain is their biggest beef. You need Link to climb a mountain, a tower, or a wall, and and he's like Spider-Man until it starts to rain and he slips and falls. Even worse, waiting the rain out is a problem, seeing as the only way to suppress time is using a campfire, which you can't start very easily if it's raining. Yeah, rain is pretty annoying. And god help you if the current storm is a thunderstorm, because if you currently have anything metallic equipped, lightning will home in on you, knock you flat on your ass (when it doesn't kill you outright), and make you drop your weapons.
    • Weapon durability also catches a lot of flack because there's no way to get around it, and they all break after mere minutes of sustained use. This wouldn't be so bad if A: you had a decently-sized weapon inventory and B: there was a way to repair your weapons like in other games with weapon durability, but you're out of luck here. Weapon inventory is painfully limited even with Hestu's upgrades, and the only weapon you can "repair" is the Master Sword, which takes a while to restore itself after having its durability worn out.
    • Speaking of inventory, if you open a treasure chest and the item is a type with its inventory maxed out, you'll likely find yourself screaming internally at the sight of the "Your inventory is full." message, followed by you slooooowly putting it back in. While you can easily just toss a weapon and open it back up, it adds to the tedium where a simple option to exchange an unneeded weapon for the one you found would have easily circumvented it.
    • As in Skyward Sword, the stamina wheel can be a real bother when you're sprinting. Even with it upgraded, unless you're ready to constantly pause and hork down stamina-restoring food and elixirs, anything more than a few seconds of sustained running will leave Link panting and gasping as if he sprinted across the entirety of Texas in one go.
    • Merely getting across bodies of water can be a slog no matter what. Swimming usually isn't an option since it burns through stamina and you swim slow (and that's when you aren't actively being pushed back by a current), leaving you to either sloooowly cross rivers or swathes of ocean by carefully hopping across Cryonis blocks (which you can actually break if you land in the water and re-emerge from under them), using a hard-to-find Korok Leaf to steer a sailboat, or say "screw it" and glide across with the help of Revali's Gale which isn't an option across large distances like with Eventide Isle.
    • The enemy variety, or lack thereof, can be disappointing because in a mere hour or so in a game that can take hundreds to do everything in, you're likely to see every one type of every species there is. And not only is it repetitive, but it can be an active detriment to immersion since you'll be seeing them in every environment instead of ones they'd make sense to be fought in.
  • Superlative Dubbing: While the game's English dub is contentious, very few people have problems with Revali's voice. Sean Chiplock's delivery is phenomenal, and perfectly captures his smug, cocksure demeanor while adding a humorous flair to his Jerkass behavior.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: The unlockable Tingle outfit added as part of the game's DLC comes off as a walking middle finger to the controversial Manchild. Its defense is terrible, its ability is situational to the point of near-uselessness, and to top it off, wearing it will freak out everyone you talk to.
  • That One Attack: Pick a lightning attack. Any lightning attack. It doesn't matter if they're Shock Arrows, lightning blasts, or anything else that's electric, it always sucks to be hit by one because you'll often take a huge amount of damage, drop your weapon, and will be temporarily stunned on top of that. Unsurprisingly, electric enemies tend to be the game's biggest Demonic Spiders, while the lightning-slinging Thunderblight Ganon and Shock Arrow-shooting Lynels are among the most difficult boss fights in the game. On the flipside, lightning attacks are just as devastating in your hands which makes this something of a double-edged sword for them like it does with you.
  • That One Boss: Thunderblight Ganon for being way faster than the other Blight Ganons and for having an arsenal of hated electric attacks to throw at you. And the longer you put off fighting it, the stronger it gets with each Blight Ganon's death.
    • Lynels really blur the line between Demonic Spiders and this trope, because while they're technically enemies, they have boss-level health and are a hell of a lot tougher than the game's actual bosses thanks to that bulk, their speed, and their monstrous attack power.
  • That One Level: With the exception of Vah Medoh, merely getting to the Divine Beasts is an ordeal in and of itself. Similarly, some towers can be brutally hard to climb up. To elaborate:
    • The road to Zora's Domain and by extension Vah Ruta is a harsh one, as it's infested with enemies wielding electric weapons that can drop you in one hit if you go there early like the game nudges you into doing, and even if you come back after getting more hearts they're still insanely dangerous. It's also perpetually rainy, meaning that you can't climb up and around the path to make things easier on yourself.
    • To get to Vah Rudania, you have to scale Death Mountain. But to do so, you need to have adequate heat protection or else you'll burst into flames and die climbing the mountain. The catch? If you want to make a Fireproof Elixir, the materials are all on Death Mountain. If you want Fireproof Armor, it's on death Mountain. There is a lady at a certain stable who will sell you the Elixirs you need, but it's very easy to miss her which leads to a surprising amount of players stocking up on healing items, and booking it up the mountain while cramming enough food to feed an army down their throats so they don't die on the way up.
    • To fight Vah Naboris, you'll first need to infiltrate the Yiga Clan Hideout. And unfortunately for you, it's a forced stealth mission through a fairly mazelike area where getting caught will lead to you being hounded by Yiga Blademasters who can kill you in one hit. And in a frustrating break from the game's rules, they WILL kill you no matter how many Fairies you have to protect yourself with. Mipha's Grace doesn't work either.
    • Akkala Tower is in the middle of a humongous citadel crawling with high-level Bokoblins and Moblins, while Guardian Skywatchers fly around and patrol it. And if that wasn't enough, the place if flooded with Malice that cuts off a lot of potential routes and forces you to have do some precise platforming on threat of the purple ooze eating through your health like it's candy.
    • The Ridgeland Tower has the misfortune to be in the center of a Demonic Spider breeding ground: it's in a lake filled with Electric Lizalfos and Electric Wizzrobes, and when you're wet those threatening electric attacks hit even harder. And if you manage to slip by and start climbing, don't get cocky because those Electric Wizzrobes will summon a thunderstorm and force you back down to Earth thanks to the rain making climbable surfaces slippery.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Champions. All four have amazing designs, fun personalities, and have great character dynamics with Link and Zelda. So naturally, their appearances are few and far between, and they're already dead by the time the game takes place.
    • Their successors also have fairly limited screentime, but at the very least Sidon, Yunobo, and Riju make the most out of what they have. But like with the entirety of the Rito scenario, Teba's just kind of "there" and doesn't get much time to show off his personality before flying you up to Vah Medoh.
    • The Zelda franchise as a whole has a huge, memorable rogues' gallery of enemies for Link to fight. Breath of the Wild uses a fraction of it: you won't be terrorized by Peahats sailing across Hyrule Field, Leevers won't attack you en masse in the desert, Redeads won't paralyze you with their terrifying screams in creepy areas, Gohmas and Wolfos don't stalk the forests... all you get are the same groups of Octoroks, Keese, Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos infesting the entire kingdom, with a few appearances from Wizzrobes and Lynels here and there.
    • There are plenty of fun non-horse mounts you can ride: deer, bears, the Lord of the Mountain... but sadly, you can't register them at the stable and keep them for your adventures, and they make a break for it the second you dismount. The Stalhorse is in a similar boat, and dies once the sun rises.
  • Ugly Cute: Bokoblins may be evil, repulsive little goblin creatures, but they look like Stitch crossed with a pig, and their little happy dances as they party with their brethren by their campfires are just plain adorable. It's lead to some fans feeling bad about killing them, because they seem pretty chill when they aren't causing trouble.
  • Uncanny Valley: While the important NPC's look great, some of the generic hylians tend to look... weird. This is likely a consequence of most of the NPC's being created through a modified Mii Maker engine, which to be fair does work most of the time, but when it doesn't the characters created through it can look downright grotesque.
  • The Unexpected:
    • Fi's voice-only cameo in the final memory was a huge surprise, since Skyward Sword had her seal herself away in the Master Sword that would have prevented her from showing up ever again.
    • All returning enemies are standard Zelda monsters: Bokoblins, Moblins, Chu Chus, Keese... then there's the Lynels, which have never appeared in a 3D Ocarina of Time-style game until now. They're rare enemies in the few top-down games they've appeared in, which makes their presence a huge surprise.
  • The Woobie:
    • King Rhoam lost his wife when Zelda was very little, leaving him to have to try his hardest to help his daughter awaken her divine powers while also keeping Hyrule in order as Calamity Ganon's return drew near. But thanks to his and Zelda's differing priorities and her own failures to awaken her powers, his scolding would create a rift between the two and he'd die before getting a chance to apologize. By the time Link meets him, he's a lonely ghost roaming the Great Plateau, haunted by his failures as a father and a king. Helping a freshly awakened, amnesiac Link is the closest he can get to setting everything right, but he feels that it's nowhere near enough to make up for his many mistakes in life.
    • Poor little Koko. Her mother's dead, and unlike her blissfully unaware sister she knows it. When she isn't crying about it in the outskirts of Kakariko Village, she's ragging on herself for not being anywhere near as good of a cook as she was.
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